A leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement in the West Bank was assassinated by Israel on Wednesday when a helicopter fired a rocket into his car in Wadi Tuffah to the west of Nablus.
Al Jazeera satellite channel identified the Islamist as Salah Darwazeh, 37.
Israel’s assassination policy has claimed the lives of 42 resistance activists since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation.
The media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
